


The Old Graveyard

by PetrichorPerfume



Series: Amens in Amber [5]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Adam Milligan in Lucifer's Cage, Adam Milligan is Not Forgotten, Episode: s15e08 Our Father Who Aren't In Heaven, M/M, Michael Possessing Adam Milligan, Midam Week (Supernatural), Post-Episode: s15e08 Our Father Who Aren't in Heaven, Protective Michael, Slow Burn, Spoilers, midam
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-19
Updated: 2019-12-19
Packaged: 2021-02-25 23:27:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,855
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21853690
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PetrichorPerfume/pseuds/PetrichorPerfume
Summary: If Michael is found unworthy to enter the kingdom of peace for loving Adam Milligan, so be it.
Relationships: Michael/Adam Milligan
Series: Amens in Amber [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1527551
Comments: 15
Kudos: 121





	The Old Graveyard

**Author's Note:**

  * For [pinkdiamonds](https://archiveofourown.org/users/pinkdiamonds/gifts).



> Big thank you to @pinkdiamonds, who gifted me the second one of two books in translation published by Father Leonardas Andriekus. It's called "Eternal Dream," and this story is inspired by the first part of the poem 'The Old Graveyard.' 
> 
> Slight spoilers for Season 15 Episode 8: Our Father Who Aren't in Heaven.
> 
> Lots of Midam feels. 
> 
> Let me know if you feel 'em, too.

The Old Graveyard

(from Leonardas Andriekus’ ‘Eternal Dream’)

If I am found unworthy

To enter the kingdom of peace,

At least remember, Lord, that I closed the gates

Of the old graveyard more than once –

As the wind tossed and banged them,

And did not let the dead rest easy,

After the labors of the summer and fall.

Freedom had always been one of those things that Michael understood in principle, but never in practice – one of those blessings he thought his Father had purposefully not bestowed upon him. He was, after all, the Viceroy of Heaven. He was his Father’s second in command; the favorite son. It all made perfect sense – there was a plan, as God had commanded it, and it was Michael’s role to see that plan come to fruition. Free will, for him, for everyone, was an illusion.

And if he found himself having doubts, that was, of course, a flaw in his own being, and he quickly ushered out those niggling shards of regret, the ones that kept growing in number as the apocalypse drew nearer, the ones that became impossible to ignore once he’d found himself in Stull Cemetery, facing his destiny, fulfilling God’s will, as it had been written – and feeling so very hollow.

It wasn’t until he saw Lucifer – no, Sam, and Lucifer with him – falling, that he began to realize his mistakes.

He no longer remembered if it was Adam that reached for Sam, or he who reached for Lucifer, brother to brother reaching across the abyss of the years which had grown mountainous between them – all he knew was that he couldn’t let him fall alone.

Once Lucifer had taken over Sam again, midway through their long, spiraling fall towards the Cage, Michael had reached for him, then, drew him close and let him expend his rage and sorrow as the other thrashed in his arms, howling at the unfairness of it all until they reached the end of their journey and the four of them were roughly deposited in a Cage meant for one.

The Cage had been constructed in such a way that they were their souls and their vessels separated. Sam became Sam, and Lucifer took on the form of a prior vessel. Michael, after seeing Sam’s reaction to Lucifer’s change, had decided to stay in the guise of Adam Milligan, who had already staked out a corner and was busily carving a line away, on the floor of his corner.

“What are you doing?” Michael had asked.

Sam and Lucifer were in a corner together, and it didn’t look like Sam was winning. Michael had other worries; his vessel was his responsibility; he felt somehow bound to Adam in ways he would never feel towards Sam.

“Well,” Adam had said, voice full of bitterness and loathing, “If we’re going to be in here for the rest of eternity, I’d better get counting.”

“It won’t stay,” Michael had said, and realized an instant after that it had been the wrong thing to say. A glare from Adam confirmed that.

“Go find your own corner,” Adam had said, resigned. He brandished his stick at Michael, sparing a glance towards what Lucifer was doing to Sam on the other side of the Cage.

“I’m not going to hurt you,” Michael had whispered, and had dutifully gone and found a free corner, the one that was slightly warmer than the other, but still not as warm as Adam’s had been.

***

And so it went.

Every day, or at least what passed for an approximation of a day in the Cage, Adam would wake up and scratch the same line into the Cage floor. It would promptly disappear.

It didn’t take long, however, for the stick to wear down. Soon, it was little more than a nub. One day, it splintered apart and Adam, who hadn’t spoken since their brief exchange at the start of their imprisonment, had just gathered the pieces and put them in their proper place in his corner, silent tears streaming down his face.

That night, Michael had stolen over to Adam’s corner, examined one of the shards, and built a new stick for Adam. It was a superior stick by far, and it even had a soft layer of bark, where the other had been bare. He wrapped it in a red ribbon and returned to his corner to try to rest his mind and distract himself from Lucifer’s ministrations on Sam.

He woke up with Adam in his arms, in his corner, and he was briefly tempted to say something about having their own corners, but then he decided he wanted to be a different kind of being and he’d just held on tighter, as if Adam Milligan were the last bit of floating debris in a flooded world, the last sturdy, watertight thing in Creation. For all Michael knew of the Cage so far; he was.

They talked endlessly after that, about everything and nothing and anything in between. They talked about what it had been like when the first stars went on, and what it would be like if aliens destroyed the world while they were under it. After a short while, maybe 20 failed-stick-marks later, Michael had broached the subject of what would happen if ever they walked free. Adam had shuddered and shaken his head.

“It’s never gonna happen, Michael,” he’d said, sure in his conviction. “No one is coming for us.”

And then someone did come. Castiel. To retrieve Sam’s body. And Adam’s.

Adam had been sleeping, Michael curled around him. Castiel had reached in for Sam, then for Adam, but Michael had just stared at him, wordlessly, hoping not to wake Adam, hoping not to lose the best thing that ever happened to him, praying to his brother to leave him one comfort in life.

It was a cruel and selfish thing to do; this much he knew. Adam went back to his own corner after learning what Michael had done, and it took him a dozen sticks, all tied in ribbons of increasing pomp and circumstance, for him to even begin to forgive Michael.

“I was wondering,” Adam said, one day.

“Yes? Anything?” Michael drank up the words like a man dying of thirst, or rather, of silence.

“Can you only do sticks?”

“I can do bows,” Michael said, stating the obvious, as he was wont to do, and Adam had laughed – such a beautiful, musical sound.

“Of course you can,” Adam had said, nodding along.

Michael smiled. “How about a blanket?” The fact that they had taken to sleeping in separate corners once more went unmentioned.

“I’d love one,” Adam said, even though he slept in Michael’s corner that night, draped in both Michael and his – no, their – blanket.

***

Their love was glacial – it grew as vast than empires, and more slow.

Sometimes, to Michael, it felt like they were taking two steps forward, and three steps back. Progress was made as if they were dancing with fire, each afraid of being burnt by the other.

Time moved in infinitesimal increments. It ebbed and flowed around them, the years bending into centuries.

“How long has it been?” Adam asked. “Remind me,” he pleaded.

Michael chuckled darkly. “It’s been too soon since you’ve asked.”

Adam thought back. At last count, it had been four-hundred-something years. “Tell me.”

Michael wanted to kiss him, in that moment, and resisted by a slowly fraying thread of self-control. “Four-hundred,” he began. He hiccupped. “Four-hundred eighty.”

“And?”

“Four-hundred eighty-two, four months, three weeks, and six days.”

Adam made a quick mental calculation. “So it’s a Sunday?”

“A Thursday,” Michael corrected.

Adam let out a small, broken sound at the thought of Thursday and its angel, and Michael put his dreams of kissing the other away for another hundred-odd years.

***

“Wake up,” Michael was saying.

Adam groaned. “It’s too early in the morning for this,” he grumbled, but obligingly sat up and rubbed the sleep from his eyes.

“It’s closer to noon than you know,” Michael said with a gleam in his eyes.

Rolling his eyes, Adam started to say, “If this is another anniversary...” but he never got to finish because Michael was suddenly in his lap, kissing him.

Part of Adam wanted to pull away, to blame Michael for that night way back when he’d sent Castiel away all but empty-handed, when the angel had been willing to rescue them both. But part of him hadn’t been kissed in far too long, had wanted more than just cuddling together for warmth and waking up tangled in each other’s arms and awkwardly pulling away from the desires their bodies made known.

It was strange to see his own face reflected back at him, and after a long moment, Michael pulled away.

“I’m sorry,” the other was saying. “I don’t know what came over me, I-”

But he never got to finish that thought, either, because Adam pulled him in close and kissed him deep. “Don’t you dare,” he said, breathless. “You can’t kiss someone like that and then apologize.”

“I’m-” Michael began.

“Don’t,” Adam breathed against his lips. “Don’t you dare say you’re sorry, Mika.”

The nickname stuck. Their kisses grew more intense, and more frequent, much to the distain of Lucifer, who tried as hard to ignore them as they did to ignore him.

Then one day, Lucifer was gone, freed, again, and Michael withdrew into himself for days and refused even to provide Adam with a new stick when the old one ran out.

They both sulked, after that, and it wasn’t until Michael started to cry, long, heaving sobs that rattled the Cage’s bars, that he allowed Adam near him once more, clinging to him for comfort.

“Tell me,” Michael said between sobs. “What would be the first thing you’d do, if you ever got out of this place?”

Adam’s hands weren’t quite sure what to do with themselves. “I don’t know about you,” he said, hesitating. “But I’ve been craving a burger and fries for the past three hundred years.”

“That’s what we’re going to do,” Michael said. “When we get out. Together.”

Their eyes met. “Together,” Adam agreed. “Or not at all.”

They made love for the first time after that. It was slow and sweet and was over far too quickly. In the aftermath, they lay breathing next to one another, Adam draped in a blanket, Michael clad in nothing at all. Adam smiled, and it was contagious. There was hope, where once there had been none; love, where once there had only been the cold comfort of their respective corners; warmth, where none had been.

***

A hundred years passed, then another. The centuries etched their way into their souls. Age did not weary them, but the years... The years took their toll.

And then they were free. The Cage gave a mighty shake. Its bars parted like the Red Sea for Moses.

Adam took Michael’s hand, and together, they walked up out of Hell, into the light.

_~ long is the way and hard, that out of hell leads up to light ~_


End file.
